The Code Wall

This has been a rough week for me in terms of code. While I was able to get all the other dailies done, I find myself in much the same position as David, intimidated and flummoxed by the 5th of our dailies for the past two weeks-ish. However, as opposed to David’s frustration with the current disjunct between original ideas and coding capability, I find myself working with an idea that I think should be so much easier to accomplish than it has ended up being.

So, for my original moving project, I’ve been trying to make a very simple rain effect: diagonally descending lines against a black background. Now, this seems relatively accomplishable on paper, but in practice there’s actually kind of a lot going on: arrays, random integers, RNG-dependent variables: actual math shit. Along with this, there’s the weird nuance of p5.js’s little insular language, its artsy pigdin of JavaScript; these two combined are making it hard to see where my code is wrong, if it is wrong, if it won’t work no matter what, etc. As of writing this blog entry, all I know for sure about my code is that it can make a black background.

Basically, it feels like I’m at the point where I’m wading beyond my previous experience and the rules of common sense. It’s a tough transition, but I’m working on it, y’know? I know that once I get past this blockade, at least, I’ll wind up with a much greater sense of what I’m doing with the code.

I’m for sure going to show up to tomorrow’s open lab hours, so that should help me to an extent, but for now I guess I just have to keep trying to get it right; I haven’t really done this step much before, so it’s hard to get used to, but I know it’s what needs to happen.